Image by Steve Johnson from Pixabay

There’s a popular belief that we writers are tortured souls. A bit of Googling will produce long lists of authors who committed suicide. Meanwhile, the process of writing is often portrayed as a painful, never-ending struggle to capture elusive ideas in the imperfect medium of language. Who is unfamiliar with the portrait of the author hunched over his scribbles in the chill hours between midnight and dawn, flanked by a smoldering cigarette on one side, the dregs of a whiskey on the other, the floor strewn the crumpled remains of discarded pages?

Aldous Huxley wrote: “Perhaps it’s good for one to suffer. Can an artist do anything if he’s happy? Would he ever want to do anything? What is art, after all, but a protest against the horrible inclemency of life?”

I really wonder about this stereotype, though. Most of the writers I know seem to be moderately stable and well-adjusted individuals. Of course they’re sometimes stressed by deadlines or frustrated by the difficulty of getting their ideas out of their heads and onto the page. Like me, though, they seem to write mostly for the joy of it, the thrill that comes from creating characters and their stories and sharing them with the world.

A snide reader might remark that erotica doesn’t count, because it’s not “art”. I’m not going to split hairs trying to specify what does and does not qualify for that label. That would be an endless argument (akin to the bottomless pit of distinguishing “erotica” from “porn”). I choose to categorize my work as art. I believe my tales reflect both creative inspiration and literary craft. The fact that I’m drawn to exploring the many varieties of desire, as opposed to other themes, is not relevant to either the quality or the value of what I create.

Do I sound defensive? It’s true that the world offers us erotica authors very little in the way of respect. But honestly, I don’t care most of the time. I love writing. I need to write, almost as much as I need to breathe. When I’m away from my WIP for too long, my spirit sags. I miss the magic of spinning fiction.

I’m proud of my writing, too. I’ve had a fair bit of success in my nearly seven decades. I have a lengthy professional resume. Still, my books (not listed on the official CV of course!) may well be my most prized personal accomplishments – even though most people in my life aren’t even aware they exist.

During the past month I haven’t been able to write, due to an injury. In some ways, that has been the most difficult part of the experience. When I couldn’t write – not just my WIP but also emails, blog posts, book reviews and critiques – I felt terribly cut off from my community of authors as well as from my creative self. I had to struggle to remember, and hold on to, the joy of being a writer.

Now I am finally starting to regain the ability for two-handed typing. I’m eager to get back to my poor, temporarily abandoned novel. Indeed, I wrote a page or so last weekend. Alas, this wasn’t easy. My right arm is healing, but typing tends to increase the pain quite a lot.

So at present, I am in fact temporarily suffering for my art. And I’m willing to do that, for now, in return for the excitement of feeling the story take shape and the satisfaction of seeing the words unfurl on the page.

Welcome to part 2—the juicy part–of my discussion of Francoise Barret-Ducrocq’s Love in the Time of Victoria: Sexuality and Desire Among Working-Class Men and Women in 19th Century London. As I mentioned last month, Barret-Ducrocq revealed the sexual culture of city folk of modest means by studying the application files of the Thomas Coram Foundling Hospital in London from the 1850s through the 1880s.

“Application files” sounds pretty dull, but in fact the mission of the foundling hospital—to raise the illegitimate children of women of “good character” and not prostitutes—meant that they required a detailed history of the love affair that led to the conception of the child. One of the many surprises of the book is that the interviewers at the hospital, as well as employers and families of the women, were not as harsh in their moral judgments as Victorian literature and drama seem to indicate was the norm. For as we know, in Victorian novels and plays, where a character always reaps what she sows, a woman who has sex out of wedlock must die a miserable death in a filthy alley, spurned by all.

Instead, in many ways these stories of girl-meets-boy follow a familiar path, give or take a cell phone. Often the women met their lovers in the course of their duties as maidservants or shop girls.

Here’s how Emma J., a hosiery worker, met the father of her child on a Sunday afternoon while taking a walk with her stepmother, a laundress. “The young man, a butcher’s assistant—and evidently a persuasive talker—accompanied them to their door, entertaining them with jokes, and managed to arrange a further meeting with Emma while her stepmother was present: We walked together on this occasion and these walks were repeated. About Xmas he visited me in the presence of my parents and proposed marriage, saying he should like to settle and go to America.” (Love in the Time of Victoria, 88)

Emma’s charming lover ended up going to America without her, but the majority of the relationships followed the usual ritual: first people were “speaking,” then they were “walking out together,” then later, when mutual attraction was confirmed, they would “keep company.” (Love, 86). The next step was sexual intimacy with marriage expected if the woman got pregnant. The promise of marriage was enough because a man’s word was binding—at least in principle. Barret-Ducrocq reports that more than three quarters of the relationships lasted longer than six months.

However, a portion of the applicants became pregnant as a result of a short-term amorous adventure. Susan W. was seduced by the coachman in the household where she worked as a maid. The other servants reportedly put him up to it because Susan “was too much of a lady” and they wanted to bring her down a peg. (Love, 96).

Nancy S. gave in to temptation wile standing against a wall in alley after a few drinks at a music hall and Sarah M., a kitchen maid, was engaged to the butcher’s boy who brought meat to her employer’s every day. They were intimate in the kitchen where she worked. (Love, 99) Other venues included the home of the woman’s parents when the house was empty, a shop storeroom, the stables, a garden in January, or the passengers’ box of a hired Hansom cab. (Love, 103-105)

Particularly evocative were the love letters that the applicants were asked to submit for the file, now preserved in the archives. These letters functioned as a text does today, to set up a time and place for a rendezvous.

“I begin to think you are right in saying absence makes the heart grow fonder and not as I thought stronger. Indeed I find my heart gets every day fonder and more feeble on your account.”

“All my love to you my own dearest Judy, I remain your true and devoted lover and soon husband…”

“I accept the kisses you sent in your note with pleasure and will return with interests on friday [sic] night althou I would rather had them from your lips than your hands.” (Love, 118-120)

While many working-class couples did marry when the woman became pregnant, the foundling hospital is the repository of love stories with mostly sad endings—the lover ran off to America or Australia or in some cases died. After the Poor Law Reform of 1834, men in Britain were no longer liable for support of their illegitimate children, so the seducer might even be found closer to home, with an existing wife and family. (Love, 177)

Fortunately, some endings were not so bleak. One woman retrieved her child from the foundling hospital after a month because her aunt and uncle discovered the situation and agreed to raise the child. Another persuaded the mother of her lover to raise her grandson. Rather than banish a disgraced housemaid, some employers kept her on through her pregnancy and rehired her after her confinement. And many employers gave the woman high character references in spite of their “misstep,” thus paving the way for the child to be cared for at the foundling hospital. Thus we see that real-life Victorians were much more forgiving than the official morality. This empathy rather than harsh judgment is certainly something to keep in mind for a writer of historical fiction—we needn’t fall into the trap of the Victorian moralists of insisting others do as we say and not as we do!

I’ll let Barret-Ducrocq herself have the final words on love in the time of Victoria:

For the time being, though, we should be content to let the archives speak, and thus contribute to a never-ending task which is a precondition for human progress: the effort to keep the past alive so that later generations can learn from it, and measure themselves against it. It is an ordinary paradox of history that, through a new reversal of values in sexual morality, the young Europeans of the late twentieth century have much more in common with these dropouts from Victorian society—these artisans, these domestics who disappeared abruptly in the aftermath of the First World War—than with the contemporary moralists who slandered them with such total conviction. (Love, 181)

Write on!

(“Two Lovers” by Thomas Bridgeford courtesy of Wikimedia Commons).

Fiction writers endure a lot of grief from our friends and family members about characters. We all claim that they’re completely fictional but inevitably, some joker will read one of our stories, corner us someplace, then insist with a lascivious grin “That was really based on so-and-so, wasn’t it? Come on, you can tell me! It’ll be our little secret.”

I’m sorry to burst their balloon, but my characters are not—repeat, not!—based entirely on people I know. I usually take bits and pieces from different acquaintances or people I encounter, then use them to form a whole person. It’s sort of like following a recipe—take one physical attribute, mix in a unique hairstyle or color, add a dash of cute smile, a smidgen of speech pattern or a catchphrase, an eye-catching style of dress, blend them all together, and voila!—you have a character.

I know writers who will compose complete biographies and backstories before they even write the first line. One of them is a good friend who writes cozy mysteries. She works out all the details in advance—age, body type (including height, build, hair and eye color), glasses or contacts, how they walk, clothing preferences, speech patterns, occupation, and background. She relies on this to help build a realistic character, and it’s effective.

One writer sent me a list that they complete when creating a character. It included the things I mentioned above, plus these other details: Do they live alone or with others? What is that relationship like? Do they have children? What are they like? Does the person own a home or live in an apartment? How is it furnished? Tidy or sloppy? How often do they change their clothes? What is their favorite and least-favorite food? What kind of music do they like?

There are a total of 20 questions she answers in detail before starting the story. Many of them resemble those asked by an online dating service. Granted, this guarantees a well-defined character, but if you did this for every person in your story, and you have a large cast of supporting players, this could consume a lot of time.

I discovered early on that part of the joy of reading a good story was populating the cast with my favorite actors and actresses. Reading a Phillip Marlowe or Mike Hammer adventure when I was in high school was more enjoyable when I envisioned people like Bogart, Ladd, Bacall or Stanwyck essaying the lead characters. After watching the Sherlock Holmes movie series from the 1940s, I can’t read one of Doyle’s stories without Basil Rathbone coming to mind.

When I first started writing fiction, an editor gave me some valuable advice—when you introduce a character, include a brief physical description. This turned out to be something I do with every character I conceive. Even if they don’t have much to do and will be gone by the end of the chapter, I usually have something in mind. It can be detailed, or something as simple as “He sported several days’ growth of beard, and his potbelly hung over the waist of his soiled khaki cargo shorts.”

The scenes I write all play out like movies on a giant screen in my mind. When I settle on a plot, I’ve usually assembled my dream cast of favorites to play the parts. Sometimes, this comes in handy when writing physical descriptions, but it wasn’t something I always did on a regular basis. In one of my early romantic comedies, “Anywhere the Heart Goes,” the female lead kept reminding me of someone the more I wrote. I finally realized that I had to settle on who it was, and it came to me. What I had created was a clone of one of my favorite TV actresses. That made it easier for me to describe her moving forward.

The balancing act is to provide just enough detail to give the reader a visual cue, without spoiling their fun. There’s a story about Ian Fleming, the creator of James Bond. He was alive to see the first two Bond movies being filmed in the early 1960s, and was still writing new 007 adventures. Fleming visited the set of “Dr. No,” and became entranced by actress Ursula Andress, who played the first Bond girl, Honey Ryder. So enamored was Fleming that in his work-in-progress, he referred to a female character as looking “just like Ursula Andress.”

Talk about a spoiler alert! In one sentence, he destroyed my own concept of what the woman looked like, and replaced her with his personal dream girl. My imaginary goddess might have been Diana Rigg or Raquel Welch for all I remember, but it definitely wasn’t Ursula Andress.

I hate to rain on the parade, but here’s the cold sobering truth: you can include all kinds of details in your characters, the setting, the atmosphere, and the action, but sadly, most people won’t pay close attention or remember it. When it comes to reading, we’ve become a society of skimmers with short attention spans. To prove my point, here’s a personal experience.

One of my mystery/thrillers contained a big fight scene at the climax between the hero and the primary bad guy. It was like something you’d see in a Marvel or James Bond adventure. I visualized it in my mind, playing out on that mental movie screen I mentioned, and I worked very hard to convey it in words. It took me a long time, because I fussed over every word and bit of action to make it realistic. A friend of mine read the book, complimented me on that particular scene, then deflated my balloon with the following statement.

“I’ll bet it took you a long time to write that, but it only took me about a couple of minutes to read it.”

Sometimes, I can’t win for losing.

Ashley Lister

I’m going to put the word consistency in this first sentence as a piece of foreshadowing because, in talking about developing a brand voice, the key is to be consistent.

For example: you’ve written a witty erotic romance that shines a new light on the well-worn fabric of the heteronormative BMG (Boy Meets Girl) story. You’re wanting to shout about it on social media because you believe everyone will get a thrill from this narrative. All sounds good so far.

But, with author branding, you’ve got to keep your brand voice consistent.

Why should we care what others think of our brand voice? Is it worth being political? Is it worth supporting a cause? Should I stop swearing? Are you suggesting I should stop being me?
I’ll answer each of these questions below.

Why should we care what others think of our brand voice?
Whilst we’re trying to sell our books, sometimes this involves selling ourselves: which means making our brand voice an attractive package.

It’s easy to forget that, as writers, we are trying to sell ourselves on a daily basis. But writers do this all the time and we buy into this transactional mindset. I’m looking forward to buying the latest Stephen King. Later this month I’ll be sitting down to read one of my favourite Lisabet Sarai’s. There’s a new Mitzi Szereto just been released that looks like a lot of fun. I often buy books based on who the authors are and this has substantially come about through their personal brand voices.

I appreciate some authors are reading these words thinking, “If someone doesn’t like my brand voice, they can fuck off and read someone else’s books.” This is a wholly appropriate response – and people with that attitude clearly have a forthright brand voice already. It won’t be appealing to everyone but the air of independence and insouciance is attractive to many readers and, if it’s working for you, keep it working.

For the rest of us, the chance to gain some favour with a larger audience doesn’t usually come through telling readers to fuck off. It involves being on our best behaviour, as though mummy has just sent us to a children’s party and we’ve been told to play nicely with the other children. We remember our please and thank you and we only speak after considering those three pillars of communication: Is it true? Is it kind? Is it necessary?

Why should we care what others think? Because, if people think I’m an arrogant piece of shit with a crappy attitude before they’ve learnt that I’m an author, they’re unlikely to throw money at me to read my fiction.

Is it worth being political?
No. But don’t let that stop you if you feel passionately about the subject. I constantly post political material on my FaceBook page and Twitter feed. I have left-wing politics, and there’s a strong chance this is alienating any potential right-wing readers, so I’m thinking of pulling back from such things. Partly, this is because I want to increase sales for my material and I don’t want to antagonise potential readers for something as irrelevant to my writing as my political beliefs. And, partly, this is because I don’t think anyone has ever read one of my shared memes and thought, “Goodness! Ashley’s right. I must change political allegiances.” I’m clearly preaching to an echo chamber of people who share my personal beliefs and I can think of more fruitful things to share on social media.

Is it worth supporting a cause?
It’s always worth supporting good causes. I’m not suggesting this should be done as a way of capitalising on the good name of any charity to improve personal sales or promote brand identity. But if you want to use your work to benefit others, that’s admirable and deserves to be applauded.

Should I stop swearing?
Do you swear in real life? Do expletives and epithets appear in your fiction? If swearing is a part of who you are and what you already produce, then swearing should definitely be a part of your brand voice. Admittedly, this is going to be a turn-off for some potential readers but it saves them being pissed off and giving a one-star review after they’ve bought your book and then being butt-hurt from reading the word shit-weasel. (I used the word shit-weasel in my novella Fearless, although I’ve only heard good things about this from people saying they want to use it as their go-to expletive).

However, if your witty heteronormative BMG story contains no swearing, and is aimed at a readership who eschew taboo language, then I’d say give it a miss.

Ricky Gervais once commented online that people who don’t like the word c*nt, wouldn’t hear it so much if they didn’t keep acting like c*nts. This is a comment from a celebrity whose admirers understand that he swears and they take no offence at the taboo language. Similarly, those people who are offended by his use of the C-word are reminded to avoid Gervais and his particular brand of comedy.

Are you suggesting I stop being me?
Never. Developing a brand voice is all about presenting the version of you that most accurately reflects how you best want to communicate. Are you a witty person? Share jokes and make people smile. Are you an inspirational writer? Share inspirational thoughts and words of wisdom. Share material that reflects the side of your personality that If anything, I’m suggesting we go back to those three pillars of communication I mentioned before and add a fourth one: Is it true? Is it kind? Is it necessary? Does it reflect the way I want to be perceived? If you can answer yes to all four of those questions, I’d say you’re definitely developing your brand voice.

As we write, we learn.

When I compare my recent work with my early books, I see major changes. My dialogue no longer sounds so wooden and unrealistic. My characters have a depth and complexity missing in my first couple of novels. My sentences, in general, have become less wordy and academic, more varied in their length and structure.

I’m sure that if you’ve been writing for a while, you can discern the same types of positive developments in your own work. One common pattern for authors is to shift from an intuitive, chaotic process of following one’s imagination to a more systematic and disciplined approach – a transition from being a “pantser” to a “plotter”.

Early books often reflect personal passions. New authors are so excited that they really don’t need to think. The words just pour out onto the page, almost without conscious effort. As authors become more aware of craft issues, however, they often move in a direction of more conscious control.

Writing my first novel, Raw Silk, was like that – a breathless rush of feeling. At the same time, my progression in terms of plot has followed a contrary trend. When I began writing, I was a “plotter”. I had a clear mental outline for each book. I knew what main events would occur. I had sketches for most of the important scenes and a plan for the ending. Sometimes I’d experience “Aha” moments along the way – I was never so enamored of my outline that I’d reject an unanticipated but brilliant insight! – but I’d already worked out sixty to seventy percent of the plot when I sat down to create the first chapter.

Nowadays, that’s all changed. I’ve become far more comfortable allowing the story to lead me along unanticipated paths, rather than forcing it to stick to my planned route. And to be honest, I believe this has improved the result. I think my recent books are far more spontaneous, original and surprising than my early stories. In addition, they’re more fun to write, less like the term papers I was so adept at churning out in graduate school, more like my poems.

When I open my mind, ideas flood in. While this makes the writing process intense and dynamic, it does create problems, especially when I’m penning a longer piece. As plot twists occur to me, I’ll often throw them in, just to see what happens. I like to keep different possibilities alive – for me, writing a predictable book is almost as bad as writing an ungrammatical one! I want to keep my readers guessing. Eventually, of course, I have to figure out how to resolve all these notions. In general, readers don’t appreciate loose ends.

I’m more than three quarters of the way through my new novel right now, and I’m juggling half a dozen intriguing plot threads. Which of these should I follow? Which should I drop? I have to decide pretty soon. There are only four and a half chapters left!

The dramatic, climactic scene is fairly clear in my mind. I’m not entirely winging it. But I’m still not certain about the last chapter. Should it include sex? Revelations? Should I drop in a teaser for the next book? Should the romance with which I’ve been flirting become more serious, or does that conflict with the gleeful pansexuality of the series?

So many questions! Right now, they’re all just dangling, unanswered, all potential shapes for my story. Like the famous quantum cat, these different, potentially conflicting alternatives exist simultaneously in my mind. And as confusing as that is, it’s also exhilarating.

Sometimes, it seems, I like to keep myself guessing.

Eventually, I’ll have to open the box to discover which ones will survive.

But not quite yet.

Last month, we learned about the secret erotic portrait Queen Victoria presented to her beloved husband Prince Albert for his twenty-fourth birthday. This month, we’ll leave the hushed grandeur of the royal boudoir and take a stroll through the gritty “drawing room” of the streets to explore the erotic life of the workingmen and woman of Victorian London.

A recurring theme of this column is the difficulty of finding reliable information on the erotic lives of those who lived in centuries past. We must rely on the exaggerations of period pornography, the occasional explicit diary, sociological data about marriages and births, and our own imaginations to read between the lines. Now and then, however, we come upon a treasure that satisfies our desire to know the truth about our ancestor’s intimate experiences.

So if you want inspiration for your tale of Victorian-era lust and love, or are just interested in the history of sexuality, I have just the book for you: Francoise Barret-Ducrocq’s Love in the Time of Victoria: Sexuality and Desire Among Working-Class Men and Women in 19th Century London.

Barret-Ducrocq’s book provides us with a rare treasure–the amorous experiences of nineteenth-century working-class women told in their very own words. Barret-Ducrocq brought the past alive by studying the application files of the Thomas Coram Foundling Hospital in London from the 1850s through the 1880s. While it may at first sound dry and scholarly, the results of her research are fascinating.

The founder of this groundbreaking charitable institution, Thomas Coram (1668-1751), was a wealthy English sea captain who spent some time in colonial America and served as a trustee of the Georgia colony. While doing business in London, he was appalled to see babies left to die on the side of the road. Coram felt this state of affairs was not worthy of a civilized nation like Britain. After seventeen years of effort, he finally received a royal charter to open a hospital to care for children at risk for abandonment and raised funds from many wealthy donors. Children were first admitted to temporary quarters in 1741, and the main hospital was completed in 1745. Famed artist William Hogarth donated the above portrait of Thomas Coram to the hospital and Handel gave performances as fund-raisers in the mid-1700s. An estimated 25,000 children were cared for over a period of 200 years. The hospital closed when the last child was placed in family foster care in 1954.

By the way, Hogarth’s portrait is said to portray Coram’s seafaring endeavors on the left side and an unwed mother and child veiled by a curtain on the right to represent his charitable work. I’m unable to discern the hidden mother and child—so let me know if you see anything. On the other hand, it might be fitting that the figures are indeed invisible to the probing eye!

The Foundling Hospital had a good reputation as place where illegitimate children were well treated and got a decent start in life, but in spite of its name, an unwed mother couldn’t just leave her child on the doorstep. The institution most certainly didn’t want to reward the prostitute’s profession in any way. Rather the hospital directors sought to help women who had been taken against their will or tricked by a false promise of marriage. Accordingly, the unwed mother who sought a place for her child had to undergo a rigorous application process to assess her circumstances and character. The most important element was a detailed, handwritten (or dictated) confession, which always began with the words: “When I first met the Father….”

The woman was then required to:

“… give the exact circumstances of her encounter with the child’s father; bring the smallest memories to life—the intensity of her feelings, how long they lasted, where the act of love was performed; protest her innocence or admit her connivance and, sometimes, her own desire; give the names of relatives, employers, notables, family doctors, parsons, and ask for their corroboration. Finally, she had to produce any material evidence that would help pin down the truth about sex and amorous relations: letters arranging meetings, love letters, farewell letters, letters to and from friends and relatives.” (Love in the Time of Victoria, 42)

There is no doubt this process was invasive and voyeuristic, although the interviewers at the time no doubt saw it as their moral duty to select the deserving poor for their charity.

What their snooping has left for posterity is a wealth of explicit confessions that give us details of how working-class people of the nineteenth century flirted, what sort of man young women found attractive, where couples went to make love, and how their community responded to pregnancy out of wedlock when the man could not or would not marry his lover. (It is estimated that 40% of working-class women were pregnant when they married in 1850). The majority of these confessions are in fact stories of love, at least for a short duration. A very few even have happy endings—the child was collected from the hospital because relatives agreed to raise her, or in one case, the mother married the child’s father five years later and the family reunited. (Love in the Time of Victoria, 164)

The preciousness of such a resource is confirmed by the fact that soon after the archives were opened to scholars like Barret-Ducrocq in the 1970s, the directors decided to close them again in 1980 to protect the privacy of the living descendants. In her book, Barret-Ducrocq wrote that the records she studied would not be available again until 2030. I see that the gatekeepers are apparently less protective today: the Foundling Museum now reports that records over 110 years old are available at the London Metropolitan Archives.

Have I piqued your curiosity about these first-person accounts of ill-fated Victorian lovers? Then join me next month for some highlights from the vault! In the meantime, you can explore poignant stories from more recent former “pupils” on the Foundling Museum website.

Write on!

(Portrait of Thomas Coram by William Hogarth courtesy of Wikimedia Commons).

I keep running across interesting quotes that make me think. I suppose that’s the idea behind them, to get your brain working and provoke meaningful conversation. Our local newspaper publishes these under the title Thought for Today. Here’s a recent one, credited to Dame Edith Sitwell, English poet (1887-1964).

“Good taste is the worst vice ever invented.”

I read this in the morning and was distracted for the rest of the day, because I wasn’t sure how to take it. What did Dame Edith mean? I always thought good taste was a preferred quality in a person. It’s certainly better than bad taste, which we seem to be experiencing in abundance these days. For an example of what I’m talking about, check out social media and cable news networks.

A weekly column I follow touched on a subject I’ve blogged about before. The columnist had seen the newest reboot of “A Star is Born,” and penned an open letter to Hollywood screenwriters, suggesting that they could effectively tell a love story without dropping so many “F” bombs. I haven’t seen the movie, but I could relate to what he said. I’ve made the same observation about literary works, and I’ve never been a fan of radio Shock Jocks or some stand-up comics for that reason. Several years ago, there was a terrific film called “American Hustle.” The fact-based story was interesting, but I was distracted by the language. In fact, this was the first film I had seen that received an R rating because of the ‘F” bombs that seemed to fall with every other line of dialogue.

Is peppering your daily discourse with four-letter words an example of bad taste? I was raised to think it is. So is telling dirty jokes in mixed company, unless you’re with friends who won’t be offended. During my job as a newspaper editor, the publisher felt it was his daily duty to berate the office staff, using every variation of the “F” word imaginable. He even came up with some new uses for it. When my birthday rolled around, it was the first time I had ever gotten “Happy f****** Birthday!” as a greeting.

To be clear, I’m no prude. I know most of the bad words, but I exercise caution when I use them. The same with off-color jokes. As the late Milton Berle once said, “I’ve got a million of ‘em.” I’m not sure if I know that many, but when I tell them, I check the crowd first.

I’ve found it’s prudent to read the room before stating an opinion or starting an in-depth conversation about anything topical. This habit really came in handy over the past couple of years, thanks to something called a presidential election. I spend a good deal of time visiting friends in a small suburban community nearby. The folks who live there are very conservative and I’m not. A close friend, who leans the same direction as me, cautioned me about the local political climate when we began hanging out. As soon as I hit town, I put my opinions in storage until I leave.

I’ve known people who were obsessed with showing what good taste they thought they had, whether they actually possessed it or not. This includes an ex-wife and a former sister-in-law. In every instance, it boiled down to how many material things they owned, and how they could let everyone know about it. Cars, clothes, jewelry, homes, vacations they couldn’t afford—it was all for show, something to make up for a basic insecurity. It was a spotlight they shone on themselves, a sort of “Hey, look at me! Like the flashy bracelet I’m wearing? Want to know how much it cost?”

You know, I think I’ve figured out what Dame Edith meant by that quote. Perhaps if you’re fabricating good taste to cover up your inherent bad taste, it really is the worst vice ever invented.

Your thoughts?